FutureSight - a YEAR 10000 story

12 - Research Facility

Ready to dart and dodge to avoid fire, Daren felt eerily strange as he approached the jungle world. The huge ships now floated around the planet in some kind of orbit, but none had fired upon him. He was beginning to think he might just sneak this one out.

All the surface batteries seemed to be burnt out shells. He imagined that the Consheir rebel fleet had done most of the damage before they had pulled out. Now if he could only find the base itself...

He lowered the Anvil closer to the treetops, so close that the Punishers almost snagged on the scraggly branches sticking up. He couldn't afford being sighted by the fleet above though; he needed a place to hide and soon.

Daren spotted a deep pit. It looked man made, and in the walls of the pit he could see doors and hallways leading to other places. Maybe this was an entrance to the base.

"In fact," he thought, thinking back to the battle," this may be where some of those Preyhawks came from. A hidden landing bay. Well, I better make myself at home before they close up."

The ship slowed down and he lowered slowly into the pit. It was just barely large enough to accommodate his ship, although he was sure he scraped the paint off the tip of his ship.

He landed gently, legs extending from the belly of the ship and propping it up. The engines cooled and shut off, and Daren switched off his ship.

He sat, thinking in the darkness, for a short time. Here he was, in the most heavily guarded Triad base in all the galaxy, with no back up and only a Lasersword and two Iken pistols for weapons.

Well, he better get started.

Daren got up and checked his sidearm. His two guns were there, in their holsters. He slapped his Lasersword to check its functionality. It thrummed to life, the glowing red blade sizzling in the air. He switched it off; everything seemed to be operating at peak efficiency.

He turned on the ship again before he left, an idea having occurred to him. It would be terrible if base personnel found his ship and took it upon themselves to destroy it. All he was going to do was set up some defenses against that.

"Surface auto-cannons activated," the computer acknowledged. "Scanning surroundings... nothing unusual to report."

Daren patted the computer and got up. It would keep scanning the surrounding territory for body heat signatures. When it found one it would lock on to it, and if that signature got too close to the ship it would get shot down. As for Daren, recognition software would play its part to ensure he wasn't accidentally killed by his own ship.

He walked down the exit ramp and stepped into the openness of the concrete bunker. Even down here he could still feel the muggy jungle atmosphere. There was nobody around, and only two hallways for him to choose from.

He looked back and forth at the two. They both looked equally foreboding, and he knew nothing about either of them. Time for a coin toss.

Daren fished around in his back pocket until he came up with a penny. Heads he goes right, tails he goes left. He flicked it up into the air, and watched it-

-the penny landed on the ground, and he glanced down to see what it was. Tails.

Well he didn't really feel like going left, so he'd go right anyways. He picked up the penny and put it back in his pocket, then checked his guns. Both were ready for action. He walked forwards into the darkness of the right tunnel.

Inside the hall he could barely make out some writing on the wall. In a big black font, he saw the words 'Level One' painted. He spotted a door that read 'Base security sector 12'. He jingled the handle, but the door was locked.